Our Daily Bread: Day 4 | La Chatelaine baker makes his French baguettes with care, time and love

Ken Gordon The Columbus Dispatch @kgdispatch

Thursday

Aug 29, 2019 at 12:01 AMSep 12, 2019 at 6:46 AM

Local bakery produces 200 of the iconic crusty loaves daily

Editor’s note: In recent weeks, Dispatch reporters, along with photographer and videographer Doral Chenoweth III, fanned out across the metro area to spotlight the city’s diverse bread scene. What they found was a recipe for both cultural connection and sensory satisfaction. This is the fourth in our seven-part series Our Daily Bread.

Tad Wielezynski talks about bread with such passion that it’s unclear whether he is discussing a food or a friend.

“The thing about bread is that you’re working with something alive,” said Wielezynski, the executive chef of the three La Chatelaine bakeries/restaurants in central Ohio. “We have to take care of it, we have to nourish it (and) we have to make sure it’s growing, so we can have the quality we want.”

Although he has lived in the United States for decades, Wielezysnki, 51, retains a strong French accent from his days growing up in Belgium and France. And he certainly shares the French nation’s love of bread.

“In the French culture, bread is part of life, meaning you have to have bread every day. It’s a necessity,” he said.

>> VIDEO: The French love their baguettes

Tad is the oldest of Stan and Gigi Wielezynski’s four children. He was born in Belgium (Stan is French; Gigi is Belgian), where he got his first experience working in a bakery at age 13 and was quickly hooked.

“When I grew up, making bread was very important,” he said. “I remember my grandmother and my mom baking bread. I was always fascinated watching the bread come out of the oven. It’s just a passion that you have, like people who love cooking or love watching birds. I love making bread.”

When the family moved to France, Tad went to baking school in Rouen, in the northern part of the country. The rest of the family came to the United States in 1985, and Tad followed two years later.

After bouncing around the country, the Wielezynskis decided to move to Columbus and open La Chatelaine in Upper Arlington in 1991. They expanded to Worthington in 1993 and Dublin in 2007.

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“We wanted to bring to America the French culture of bread,” Tad said. “We wanted to educate (Americans) how bread is supposed to be, not like mushy loaves like Wonder Bread.”

Stan and Gigi now are semi-retired. The business is largely run by Tad, his brother Val, 50, and sister Charlotte Harden, 39. (The youngest sibling, Janek, 32, works elsewhere in the food business.)

Stan had authentic European-style ovens installed, made of stone and featuring a rotating wheel of volcanic rock on which the bread is baked. It is around the oven in the Upper Arlington location that Tad focuses his daily labors.

La Chatelaine produces five kinds of bread daily, but none is more iconic than the baguette — a crusty loaf that is about 2 feet long but does not have a long shelf life.

“We try to teach people that the baguette is a six-hour bread,” Charlotte said. “It’s not something you eat the next day. The French often buy one and eat it on their way home after work.”

Making baguettes is a long process. It starts with a soupy mix called poolish that contains a small amount of sourdough. Wielezynski and baker Ben Hernandez mix this with 75 pounds of flour, plus yeast and water, which will yield about 200 baguettes.

The combination goes through two mixing cycles in a vintage machine imported from France. During the second mix, salt is added.

As the dough is worked by the machine’s mechanical arm, it gets thicker and pillowy, almost like taffy. Wielezynski’s eyes light up as he tells visitors that soon, the dough will “start talking to you.” Sure enough, crackling and popping sounds emanate from the mixing bowl.

“Every time I hear that — ahhhh,” he says.

The dough then is separated into long rolls, wrapped carefully in a linen cloth and set aside to rest for 45 to 60 minutes. Just like humans, baguette dough needs its beauty sleep.

“Time is an important ingredient,” Wielezynski said.

He tests some resting bread by pushing the dough with his thumb. If it bounces back too fast, it is not ready.

“Twenty more minutes,” he instructs Hernandez.

When the dough is just right, Wielezynski places several rolls on a long-handled bread shovel, uses a razor to score each roll, then inserts the dough into the oven and removes the shovel with swift, smooth motions perfected over countless repetitions.

After the baguettes are baked, Wielezynski again lets them rest a bit.

When the warm, fragrant, crusty spears have cooled slightly, he picks one up, holds it close to his ear and squeezes gently. When the crust begins to crackle, he smiles, rhapsodizing again about the object of his affection.

“Bread is amazing,” he said. “It’s the feel of the dough, the touch, the smell … every element, every sense. The best for me is the smell. The smell of the bread is just magical.”

kgordon@dispatch.com

@kgdispatch

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